Frances Xavier Cabrini | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Virgin | |
| Born | Maria Francesca Cabrini (1850-07-15)15 July 1850 Sant'Angelo Lodigiano,Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia,Austrian Empire |
| Died | 22 December 1917(1917-12-22) (aged 67) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Resting place | St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine,Upper Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Venerated in | Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 13 November 1938 byPope Pius XI |
| Canonized | 7 July 1946 byPope Pius XII |
| Majorshrine | |
| Feast |
|
| Patronage | Immigrants |
Frances Xavier CabriniMSC (Italian:Francesca Saverio [orSaveria]Cabrini; bornMaria Francesca Cabrini; 15 July 1850 – 22 December 1917), also known asMother Cabrini, was a prominent Italian-Americanreligious sister in the Roman Catholic Church. She was the first American to be recognized by the Vatican as a saint.
Cabrini founded theMissionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC), areligious institute that today provides education, health care, and other services to the poor in 15 nations.[1] During her lifetime, Cabrini established 67 schools, orphanages and other social service institutions in Italy, the United States and other nations. She became a revered and influential figure in the Catholic hierarchy in the United States and Rome.
Born in Italy, Cabrini migrated to the United States in 1887. Despiteanti-Italian prejudice and opposition within the Catholic Church, she successfully established charitable institutions in New York City for poor Italian immigrants. She later extended these efforts to Italian immigrant populations across the United States. Catholic leaders were soon calling on her to create missions in Latin America and Europe.
Cabrini became anaturalized American citizen in 1909.[2] After her death in 1917, her order started a campaign for her sainthood. The Vatican beatified Cabrini in 1938 andcanonized her a saint in 1946. The Vatican in 1950 named her as the patron saint of immigrants.[a][3][4]
Maria Francesca Cabrini was born on 15 July 1850, inSant'Angelo Lodigiano, in theKingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, then part of theAustrian Empire. She was the youngest of the 13 children of farmer Agostino Cabrini and his wife Stella Oldini.[5] Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence.[3]
Born two months prematurely, Frances Cabrini was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life.[3] During her childhood, she visited an uncle, Don Luigi Oldini ofLivraga, a priest who lived beside a canal. While in Livraga, she made little paper boats, dropped violets she called "missionaries" in the boats, and launched them in the stream to sail to India and China. Cabrini made her first holy communion at age nine.[6] On one occasion, she fell into the river and was swept downstream. Her rescuers found her on a riverbank. Cabrini attributed her rescue to divine intervention.[7]
Cabrini's older sister Rosa was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same career path.[7] At age 13, Cabrini attended a school inArluno, Lombardy, that was run by theDaughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1868, she graduatedcum laude from the school with a teaching certificate and returned to Sant'Angelo Lodigiano to teach at the parish school.[8] She later worked for three more years as a substitute teacher at a school inCastiraga Vidardo in Lombardy.
After Cabrini's parents died in 1870, she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. However, the sisters rejected Cabrini because they believed her health wasn't strong enough.[9] In 1872, while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease and was rejected by theCanossian Sisters of Crema, again for health reasons.[6] It was reported, however, that the priest in Cabrini's parish asked the two orders to deny her application because he did not want to lose her as a teacher.[7]
In 1874, a priest inCodogno, Lombardy, invited Cabrini to take over a poorly-run orphanage operated by theSisters of Providence in that town. After arriving in Codogno, Cabrini took religious vows into Sisters of Providence, finally achieving her goal of becoming a religious sister. She added Xavier (Saverio in Italian) to her name to honor ReverendFrancis Xavier, thepatron saint of missionary service. Like Xavier, her ultimate ambition was to become a missionary inEast Asia.[2] However, the two Providence sisters in charge of the orphanage finances were jealous of Cabrini and worked to thwart her actions.[7]
In 1880, due to their turmoil, the Providence Sisters in Codogno dissolved and the orphanage closed.[7] Cabrini then spoke with the bishop of theDiocese of Lodi, Domenico Gelmini, about her future. He told Cabrini that she should pursue her dream of becoming a missionary, but that he did not know of any religious orders that would train her. Cabrini responded by saying that she would start her own missionary order.[10]
Cabrini bought a formerFranciscan convent in Codogno. With several of the former Providence sisters, Cabrini in November 1880 founded the Institute of the Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC).[11][12] At the Codogno convent, the MSC sisters took in orphans andfoundlings, opened a day school, started classes inneedlework, and sold their fineembroidery.[8] Over the next five years, the MSC sisters established seven homes, a free school and a nursery in Lombardy.
In early 1887, with the blessing of BishopGiovanni Scalabrini ofPiacenza, Cabrini opened a convent inCastel San Giovanni in theEmilia-Romagna region. Scalabrini had recently founded theScalabrinian Missionaries, an order of priests to perform missionary work with Italian immigrants in New York City. He believed that the MSC sisters would be of tremendous assistance to the priests in their work. He asked Cabrini to consider opening an orphanage in New York. Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola, a wealthy Catholic socialite in Manhattan, had been relentlessly petitioning both the pope and ArchbishopMichael Corrigan of New York to open an orphanage there for Italian girls, which she would fund. Cabrini still wanted to go to Asia, but also wanted to open a religious home in Rome and gain papal approval for MSC. She allowed Scalabrini set up a meeting withPope Leo XIII.[13]
In September 1887, Cabrini went to Rome to meet Leo XIII. She asked him for permission to set up a convent in Rome, which he readily gave. She also asked for permission to send missions to Asia. However, Leo XIII was thinking of a different destination.[7]
During the 1880s, the pope and the rest of the Roman Curia were worried about the large numbers of impoverished Italian immigrants emigrating to New York. Leo was concerned that these Catholics would leave the Church unless they received material assistance and spiritual guidance. Instead of allowing Cabrini to go to China, Leo XIII told her, go "...not to the East, but to the West..." to New York City.[11]
In December 1888, Cabrini committed to going to New York City. The pope also recognized the MSC as a missionary institute, the first group of Italian religious sisters to receive that approval. Scalabrini promised Cabrini that his religious order, Scalabrinians would greet the MSC sisters in New York City, take care of their needs, and work closely with them.[7]
Corrigan wrote to Cabrini in February 1889, welcoming her to New York City, but advising her to delay her departure to allow more time for preparation. However, when the letter reached Italy, Cabrini was already gone.[13] At age 38, Cabrini sailed for the United States, arriving in New York City on March 31, 1889, with six other MSC sisters.[14] When they disembarked from the ship, the Scalabrinians were not there. Furthermore, they had failed to set up accommodations for them. The sisters spent their first night in the United States in a decrepitrooming house withbed bugs in the mattresses, forcing them to sleep on chairs.[6][11][3]
During this period, the Catholic hierarchy and clergy in New York City were dominated by Irish immigrants who shared a common prejudice against Italians. Many of the Irish Catholics considered the Italians to be dirty, superstitious and almost pagan. Many of the Irish-run parishes segregated Italian worshippers in church basements. The archdiocese had very few Italian priests, hindering communication with the Italians.[15][13] Corrigan, also Irish, believed that only men were suitable for missionary work with immigrants. He had wanted the Vatican to just send him Italian priests, not religious sisters.
The day after arriving in New York, Cabrini and the other sisters walked into Corrigan's office. Totally surprised that they were in New York, Corrigan told Cabrini that the archdiocese was unready for them and that they should immediately return to Italy. Cabrini refused to go back, simply saying, “I have letters from the pope”, and gave her letters of introduction to Corrigan. Unwilling to defy a papal mandate, Corrigan could not force the MSC sisters to leave.[15][13]
Corrigan asked Cabrini to establish a school for Italians first and wait on the orphanage.[15][13] After the meeting with Corrigan, theSisters of Charity in theBronx gladly provided temporary residence for Cabrini and her entourage at their convent.[7] After much delay, the Scalabrinian priests provided a rundown convent for the MSC sisters in theFive Points area of Manhattan.
Soon after their arrival in the city, the MSC sisters started experiencing degrading, anti-Italian slurs and insults. Cabrini wrote back to the sisters in Italy, asking that they send over fabrics for the making of additional veils and habits. She wanted her sisters to be cleanly dressed, “otherwise they will call us ‘guinea-pigs’ the way they do to the Italians here.”[16]
Cabrini and the MSC sisters started knocking on tenement doors inLittle Italy in Manhattan. At that time, many Italian immigrants in New York were suspicious of the institutional Catholic Church, sentiments fostered by the government of the newly unified Italy. Their loyalties lay more with their personal saints. In addition, as most of the immigrants came fromSicily,Calabria and other southern regions, they were initially suspicious of the MSC sisters, who all originated from Lombardy inNorthern Italy.[15][13]
With the help of sisters from the other religious orders in New York, the MSC sisters started tending the sick, teaching children and feeding the hungry. They set up a makeshift school for 200 children in the balcony of a local Catholic church.[16] Soon the merchants in Little Italy started providing the sisters with food and funding to support their mission.[15][13]
With Corrigan's blessing and funding from DiCesnola, Cabrini opened the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum on theLower East Side of Manhattan. This was her first orphanage in the United States. However, the high cost of running the orphanage in the city, plus increasing friction with Corrigan, soon prompted Cabrini to move it to the countryside.
In 1890, Cabrini purchased a property from theJesuits inWest Park, New York, where she relocated the orphanage. She also established an MSC novitiate on the property. The West Park campus became St. Cabrini Home, the MSC headquarters in the United States and a boarding school.[15] At that time, other orphanages would automatically force girls to leave once they turned age 14. Cabrini refused to do that. She insisted that the orphanages only discharge the girls if they were placed with an adoptive family or trained to earn an independent living.[17]
Cabrini once wrote:
“What we as women cannot do on a large scale to help solve grave social ills is being done in our small sphere of influence in every state and city where we have opened houses. In them we shelter and care for orphans, the sick and the poor.”
Although she moved the MSC order to West Park, Cabrini continued to work in New York City. The Scalabrinians thwarted her efforts to build a school there. However, she joined with them in 1890 to build the first hospital in the city for Italians. She brought ten MSC sisters from Italy to staff the hospital, which opened in 1891.
As Cabrini's reputation grew, she started receiving requests for help on Catholic projects outside New York for both Italian and non-Italian Catholics. She sailed in 1891 toNicaragua to open a religious house. While there, she traveled by boat into a remote area to visit a settlement ofMiskito people.[18] Arriving inChile, she traveled by mule over theAndes Mountains to found schools inBrazil andArgentina. She also went toGrenada to start a school.[19]
The final destination in her first mission trip was New Orleans in 1892, where she set up another school for Italians. The area was a hotbed ofanti-Catholic sentiment, combined withracial discrimination against immigrants from Southern Italy, who locals believed did not "look White" In 1891, a large mob forcibly removed11 Italian men in jail and killed them. The MSC sisters established a mission in the poorest Italian neighborhood in the city.[7]
Cabrini was forced to return early to New York from New Orleans in later 1892 because the new hospital there was facing closure. The Scalabrinians had mismanaged the hospital and were trying to transfer its debts to MSC. After pulling the sisters from that hospital, she spent $250 to found the Columbus Hospital in Manhattan. Tired of the conflicts with the Scalabrinian leadership, she cut all ties between them and MSC in 1892.[13][7]
During the early 1890s, Cabrini established schools for Italian communities in Manhattan, the Bronx,Newark, New Jersey, andScranton, Pennsylvania. Cabrini returned to Louisiana in 1895 and established missions inMetairie, Harvey Canal andKenner. The MSC sisters traveling by mule through rural towns and villages to minister to Catholics. They would visit local hospitals and act as interpreters for Italian patients who could not speak English.[20]
While inBuenos Aires, Argentina, in 1896, Cabrini made these comments about how she coped with all of her work.
“Prayer and interior silence are great necessities for the person who is occupied with a thousand concerns: speaking, listening, hearing, giving of herself even to many good things...Prayer and silence bring her to that mystical rest."[7]
Cabrini arrived in Chicago in 1899 to work with the large Italian population in that city. Her next stop in 1902 was inDenver, Colorado, followed by a trip toSeattle, Washington, in 1903.[17]
In 1907, Cabrini stopped in Philadelphia to have dinner with MotherKatherine Drexel, who had established numerous Catholic missions and schools through the United States forAfrican-Americans andNative Americans. Cabrini had wanted to personally thank Drexel for her helping an MSC sister in Philadelphia. In a very amiable conversation, Drexel told Cabrini that the Vatican bureaucracy was stymieing her religious order on a legal matter. Believing in direct action, Cabrini told her to personally go to Rome and stay there until the Vatican resolved the problem. Drexel took her advice and succeeded in her mission.[21]
Cabrini wasnaturalized as a United States citizen in 1909. She applied for citizenship to assure the legal foundation of the MSC order after her death and to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans that she served.[2][7]
Cabrini in 1911 opened a second Columbus Hospital in the Italian neighborhood inLincoln Park in Chicago. However, some neighbors were unhappy with the new hospital, fearing that it would lower property values. During its construction in the winter, a vandal cut the water mains, flooding the construction site. When the Columbus Extension Hospital was being built on theNear West Side, anarson attack on its grounds was thwarted.[3][22]
In early second quarter 1912, Cabrini and several MSC sisters were visitingNaples, Italy. To return to the United States, they booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMSTitanic to New York. However, after hearing about problems with the Columbus Extension Hospital in Chicago, Cabrini switched their bookings to an earlier voyage on a different ship. The Titanic sank in theNorth Atlantic with a massive loss of life on April 15 of that year. During her lifetime, Cabrini made 24 transatlantic crossings.[23]
On one of her final trips, Cabrini visitedSouthern California in 1916. She constructed a chapel above theSan Fernando Valley on Mount Raphael to protect the residents fromwildfires. It was relocated in 1970 to Burbank, California, to become part of the Mother Cabrini Shrine.[24]
In failing health, Cabrini traveled to Chicago in 1917 to be cared for by the MSC sisters there. On 21 December 1917, she was wrapping sweets she bought as Christmas gifts for children at the Italian school. The next morning, she felt too ill to leave her bed. Sisters visited with her intermittently to attend to business of the order but eventually left her to rest. Shortly before noon, they discovered she had collapsed in her chair, with blood on her lips. She died suddenly, with some of her sisters around her, on 22 December, as a result of chronicendocarditis. She was 67 years old.[5][19]
Cabrini's body lay in state at Columbus Hospital until 26 December, when it was transported from Chicago to New York City by train. Arriving two days later, she lay in state in New York until 31 December, on 1 January 1918, Cabrini was interred at a plot at theSaint Cabrini Home in West Park.[25] Her remains were permanently exhumed in 1933 with the start of the campaign for her sainthood.
During her lifetime, Cabrini founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the United States, Latin America, theCaribbean region, and in Europe.[2] In 1926, the MSC achieved Cabrini's original goal of sending missionaries to China.[26]
In 1921, Peter Smith was born in Columbus Hospital in New York. He was blinded when a nurse accidentally administered a 50%silver nitrate solution into his eyes. The doctors said that Smith'scorneas were destroyed and that he was permanently blind. Themother superior of the hospital later touched a relic of Cabrini to his eyes and pinned a medal of Cabrini to his gown. The nurse who gave Smith the eyedrops prayed for the intercession of Cabrini to help him. When the doctors examined Smith 72 hours later, his eyes were normal. Smith then survived a severe bout ofpneumonia. The Vatican cited this case as a miracle in 1938.[27][28]
Sister Delphina Grazioli, an MSC sister, was dying after four surgical procedures in Seattle from 1925 to 1929. She saw a vision of Cabrini and then made a miraculous recovery. The Vatican accepted this also in 1938 as a miracle from Cabrini.[28]
In 1933, the MSC exhumed Cabrini's body and divided it as part of her canonization process. They sent her head to the MSCmotherhouse in Rome for display in its chapel. Her heart went to Codogno and her arm bone to the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago. The sisters sent the rest of her remains to the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York City.[29] The thousands of letters that she wrote, particularly to her sisters, were also examined during her canonization process.
Citing the Smith and Grazioli cures, Pope Pius XIbeatified Cabrini on 13 November 1938. Smith, now a priest, attended the ceremony.Pope Pius XII canonised Cabrini on 7 July 1946.[30][3] After Cabrini was canonised, an estimated 120,000 people attended a mass of thanksgiving atSoldier Field in Chicago.[31]
In 1950, Pius XII named Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts worldwide to build schools, orphanages and hospitals.[32][33]Pope Francis has stated that Cabrini's charitable works in Argentina inspired him to become a priest.[29]
In theRoman Martyrology, Cabrini'sfeast day is 22 December, the anniversary of her death. This is the day ordinarily chosen as a saint's feast day.[34] Following the reforms in Pope John XXIII'sCode of Rubrics in 1960, the United States has celebrated Cabrini's feast day on 13 November, her beatification day. This change was made to avoid conflicting with the greaterferias ofAdvent.
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The National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. When the shrine was founded in 1955, it was located within the Columbus Hospital complex in Chicago. Cabrini had founded the hospital in 1905, lived and worked there, and died there in 1917. After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the archdiocese decided that it needed a shrine in her honor. When the hospital was demolished for a high rise development in 2002, the shrine closed for ten years. It was relocated next to the new development and renovated.[35]
CardinalFrancis George rededicated the National Shrine in 2012. Today, it contains gold mosaics,Carrara marble, frescoes, and Florentine stained glass,. It also preserves the hospital room from the Columbus Hospital where Cabrini died. Visitors use the shrine today for worship, spiritual care, and pilgrimage.[35]
The Mother Cabrini Shrine is located onLookout Mountain inGolden, Colorado. Cabrini purchased the property in 1910 to serve as a summer camp for the girls from her Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver. She built the Stone House at the camp in 1914 to serve as the girls dormitory.[36]
After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the MSC converted the summer camp into the Mother Cabrini Shrine. It contains a footpath partway upLookout Mountain, marked with theStations of the Cross, that ends at a 22-foot (7 m) statue of Jesus.[37] The shrine campus includes a convent, visitor accommodations, a chapel and an exhibit of Cabrini artifacts. The statues and stained-glass windows in the chapel originated from the formerVilla Cabrini Academy in Burbank, California.[36]
TheSt. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine is located in theHudson Heights neighborhood of New York City. Cabrini purchased the property in 1899 to establish a school for the girls of wealthy families. In 1930, the MSC established theMother Cabrini High School on the property. They moved the Cabrini remains from the MSC property in West Park, New York, in 1938 to a glass-enclosed coffin under the altar of the high school chapel.[38]
Cabrini'scanonization in 1946 brought a huge influx of visitors to the school chapel. To accommodate them, the sisters in 1960 moved her remains out of the high school to a separate shrine building on the campus. They now reside in a large bronze-and-glassreliquary casket in the shrine's altar. Cabrini's body is covered with herreligious habit and a sculpted face mask and hands for viewing.[38]
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Cabrini (2024): Cabrini is portrayed byCristiana Dell'Anna
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